High Times: Marijuana Coverage Illustration by Manoel Magalhaes
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Capital & Main High Times: Marijuana Coverage Illustration by Manoel Magalhaes High Times: A New Series Looks at How Legalizing Marijuana Would Transform California Contents By Steven Mikulan s California voters prepare to make a historic decision about be enough to finally redress the 40-year fiscal drain imposed by 03 High Times: A New Series Looks at How 13 Marijuana Growing and the Environment A legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, promises and Proposition 13? Legalizing Marijuana Would Transform California omens have become part of the debate over the state’s future if This week Capital & Main looks at these and other aspects of the Proposition 64 is passed. Will the traditional small-time pot farmers 18 The Hidden Poverty in Adult Use of Marijuana Act: 05 What Happens If Marijuana Is Legalized? Marijuana’s Black Market be replaced by industrial grow operations? Will employees in this newly legalized commerce receive decent pay, working conditions • Piper McDaniel examines how one small community in rural and benefits? Or will the new cannabis worker have more in Northern California, whose residents turned to illegal marijuana 08 How Will Budtenders and Trimmigrants Fare common with the low-wage, immigrant farm laborers who toil in growing in order to escape the region’s poverty, faces an uncertain If Pot Is Legalized? California’s fields and orchards? Will a highly regulated, inspected future if legalized cannabis inaugurates an era of industrial pot and lab-tested product push the black marketers out of business production. Meanwhile, the county sheriff’s department, with its or make underground marijuana a cheaper alternative? And will eight deputies, can barely keep up enforcing state drug laws. See: the taxes on pot that will finance the machinery of regulation also High Times — The Hidden Poverty in Marijuana’s Black Market. 2 3 Photos by Pandora Young What Happens • Judith Lewis Mernit hears from experts about a little- • Judith Lewis Mernit looks at the potential for a brand-new known aspect of illegal marijuana cultivation – the brutal legalized industry to get labor issues right the first time — not If Marijuana Is Legalized? environmental damage it has inflicted, from growers’ diversion only with wages and job security, but in workplace safety. Even of rivers and creeks to the degradation of other waterways that in states where some marijuana usage is legal, cannabis workers By Melissa Chadburn are home to endangered salmon. See: Marijuana Growing and are subject to banned pesticides, carpel tunnel injuries and the Environment. incredibly long work shifts during harvest season. Pot’s Wild West days of topless bud trimmers may be nearing their end • Melissa Chadburn sorts out the hype from reasonable hen we speak of legalizing marijuana we are really speaking launched the cannabis brand Marley Natural. with Proposition 64, but, as one person tells Lewis Mernit, with expectations about Proposition 64. Will California see the kind of the Great Cannabis Debate. Come November, Californians the right rules a legalized industry could “form the backbone of W In Ohio, a group known as ResponsibleOhio tried to carve out a of economic windfall experienced by Colorado, which legalized will vote on Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which a new labor market in this country.” See: How Will Budtenders monopoly by inserting into the state constitution language that only pot in 2012? Why would the estimated 80 percent of California could bring safety and security for both cannabis consumers and and Trimmigrants Fare If Pot Is Legalized? authorized 10 people to legally grow, process and sell marijuana. pot users who are considered heavy users switch from black farmers, and the sales taxes accrued could provide much-needed The Initiative, known as the Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative, market products to higher-priced legal marijuana? And if they • Pandora Young’s photographs capture scenes from two revenue to our state. Let’s look at a short list of possible unforeseen or Issue 3, would have legalized marijuana, but commercial stick with outlaw pot, can the new legitimate industry sustain medical marijuana dispensaries – one, a union shop – in ramifications. cannabis could have grown at only 10 sites owned by investors in itself in the first critical years of legalization? See What Happens downtown Los Angeles and in Sherman Oaks. Local mom-and-pop cannabis growers fear that if we legalize the the ResponsibleOhio campaign. The Ohio initiative did not pass; If Marijuana Is Legalized? cultivation and distribution of marijuana, its distribution will by contrast, through California’s Prop. 64, our state’s multibillion- be taken over by large corporations, such as Seattle’s Privateer dollar cannabis industry would be subject to the first-ever consumer Holdings, a private equity firm that strategically invests in legal protection regulations and licensure. Perhaps most important, its medical cannabis. It was founded in 2010 by MBAs from Yale and backers also point to the astronomical amounts of tax revenue Editor’s Note: Pandora Young recently visited two medical marijuana dispensaries in downtown Los Angeles and in Sherman Oaks. This may be the last summer when recreational pot possession is a crime in California – if Proposition 64 passes in November, medical marijuana dispensaries will no longer San Francisco State University with ambitions to create new brands they claim would stream in from what is now California’s largest be the only legal way to obtain and use cannabis products. One of the dispensaries represented here – Sherman Oaks’ Higher Path Collective – is a of pot products. The company’s portfolio has expanded to include underground industry. a partnership with the Bob Marley estate, just as the Marley family union shop, a fact that could become part of the larger reality of the state’s post-Prop. 64 marijuana landscape. Professor Mark Kleiman isn’t buying it, however. Kleiman, who 4 5 “Creating a legal, responsible and result in a greater need for resource regulated framework The other scenario, though, could see expenditure by law enforcement than the return of good-paying blue collar advertised by Prop. 64’s backers. for marijuana is a jobs in warehouses and factories – jobs that provide those who work in Should the ballot measure pass, the the cannabis industry with benefits state excise tax on the retail sales of predominant civil and safe working conditions. (As marijuana will be equal to 15 percent opposed to the continued shuffling of of the sales price. This would seem rights issue and it’s blue-collar professionals into service to be a reasonable price increase for industries throughout California’s the ability to purchase pot without long overdue.” boomtowns—including Silicon Valley, legal risk. There is a projected cost which experienced a historical tech reduction in the tens of millions of – Alice Huffman, explosion but whose service-sector Photo by Pandora Young dollars—to potentially exceed $100 President, NAACP employees have been priced out of the million annually—related to the justice housing market.) system’s no longer having to enforce teaches public policy at New York University, is an expert on drug by California’s Secretary of State claims passage of Prop. 64 will certain marijuana-related criminal Then again, the reality may lie and criminal justice policy. He is also an advocate for what he calls result in a windfall of money for “after-school programs,” it makes offenses, as well as ending the incarceration and supervision of somewhere in the middle. Armed with the benefit of hindsight “grudging toleration,” a sort of middle ground between prohibition no mention of increased funds for public education itself. marijuana offenders. Meanwhile, space in overcrowded prisons about how the legalization of marijuana is playing out in other and legalization, one that favors heavy pot taxation, strict limits on would suddenly be freed up for those convicted of violent crimes. states, California will have a better sense of what doesn’t work, even Some people fear that Prop. 64 will increase marijuana use and promotion, age minimums, restrictions on public consumption and while getting a handle on what does work. These are the provisions are concerned about its potential marketing to minors. Yet the The initiative will also authorize resentencing and the destruction of a personal quantity limit. that make Prop. 64 an attractive candidate for passage: legalization of cannabis will require inspections of the product and records for prior marijuana convictions, including those of people Professor Mark Kleiman isn’t buying it, however. Kleiman, who establish packaging, labeling, advertising and marketing standards. who may have been arrested on possession or conspiracy to sell, but • a moderate sales tax teaches public policy at New York University, is an expert on drug The ballot measure states that the new law would prohibit the who had two prior felony convictions and the arrest proved to be (with the exception of medicinal marijuana) and criminal justice policy. He is also an advocate for what he calls advertising of marijuana to minors. There are questions as to their third strike. This raises a simple moral question: How does a • tax on cultivation “grudging toleration,” a sort of middle ground between prohibition whether or not marijuana will take on an advertising model that society come to punish a person more harshly for selling marijuana and legalization, one that favors heavy pot taxation, strict limits on mirrors that of alcohol or tobacco. Kleiman made an interesting than for killing someone with a gun? • regulation against advertising to minors promotion, age minimums, restrictions on public consumption and point: “Why advertise at all?” he asked. This goes back to his model As Alice Huffman, the president of the NAACP has stated: • legalization of possession and cultivation a personal quantity limit.